Cookbook Review: Tahini Baby
If you’re a Top Chef superfan the way I’m a Top Chef superfan, then you will no doubt be familiar with Eden Grinshpan. Eden, (@edeneats) is the host of the Canadian version of Top Chef, and she just seems like a really cool human.
Eden’s second cookbook, Tahini Baby, came out last year, and I finally got my hands on a copy to do a proper review.
There are three things I liked immediately about this book:
- the recipes are all vegetarian. Eden isn’t a vegetarian, but this cookbook is. The focus of the book, by the way, is Mediterranean, primarily Israeli/Lebanese/Turkish type cuisine (hence Tahini).
- I just really like Eden’s whole philosophy about cooking. She’s not precious about it. It’s seen as love, joy, family, and not to be taken super seriously. I’m genuinely here for its informal/irreverent tone.
- The food photography is pretty… but not too pretty. I like cookbooks that feel accessible. And by that, I mean, cookbooks that show food that looks like it could have been made in my kitchen. Sometimes I look at blogs or cookbooks and the food just looks too perfect. This is not that, it straddles the line between looking good but not too good.
I made Preserved Lemons and Preserved Lemon Toum, Smashed Cucumber Salad with Sumac and Sesame, Crispy, Crunchy Potato Chunks, Ultimate Shroom Shawarma, Jerusalem Bagels and Laffa Bread.
TL;DR all the recipes I made were delicious and they all turned out, with the exception of the Preserved Lemon Toum.
Here are some more detailed reviews of the recipes:
I’ve been obsessed with Jerusalem Bagels or Ka’ak bagels ever since I went to the newly-opened MishMish in the Fraserhood, and before that with Simit bagels, a similar recipe, but Turkish. So I was excited to make them at home. They turned out pretty well, my oven was a bit of a fail because it’s not the right temperature, so they weren’t as crispy on the outside as I would have liked, but very tasty.
Preserved Lemons are easy enough to make, and this was not my first time. They’re a handy condiment to have on hand. The toum was a bit of a failure because the instructions said to make it in a blender, which I did. But it didn’t really work in my blender. When I switched to an immersion blender, I had more success.
The Crunchy Potato Chunks were insane and I will be making them again. This recipe takes a delicious carb and makes it more delicious. How can you go wrong?
I haven’t used Sumac a lot as a spice/seasoning mix in my life, but I have a Persian market in my neighbourhood that I shop at almost every day, so getting it wasn’t a problem. I like it, I’ll use it more. It has a nice acidity to it. The Smashed Cucumber Salad with Sumac and Sesame was simple and it was tasty.
Finally, the Ultimate Shroom Shawarma was a huge, huge hit. It was my first time making laffa bread, which is basically like a yeasted flatbread, like a naan or a pita. My only beef with the recipe was that it made breads that felt a bit big, or maybe just my pan was too small? But it’s also about the ratio of filling to bread and it felt a tiny bit too bready for me. However, the mushroom shawarma was amazing and even Michael raved about it and asked if I would make it again. I used the new Zizzle Shawarma Spice here from Grandpa J’s and it worked a charm.
There are two things I will say that you may struggle with if you purchase Tahini Baby. The first is you might have a tough time finding some of the ingredients if you are in a location where they are not available. Again, I live in Vancouver, we have a large Persian population, and getting things like allepo, dried black limes, pomegranate molasses, za’atar and baharat is relatively easy. Though, I suppose everything is available online these days, right?
I would also say if someone is a less experienced cook, they may find some of the recipes more challenging. Specifically some of the bread recipes are pretty detailed and take quite a bit of time to execute. So it might not be the best choice for a novice cook.
Overall, though, I liked the book immensely, and I hope to make more recipes from it in the future, and even repeat a few!